Bluetooth is finally reaching the million-piece volumes that members of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) foresaw more than five years ago. Some of the widespread acceptance is due to the diminishing costs of Bluetooth integrated circuits (ICs), and some is due to the availability of highly integrated solutions. In the case of latest Bluetooth ICs from Cambridge Silicon Radio (Cambridge, England), both factors apply. The company's BlueCore3 family of products represents a third-generation (3G) development, fully compliant with the latest version of the Bluetooth standard (Version 1.2) and designed for low-power operation at +1.8 VDC.

The BlueCore3 family represents the first complete implementation of the 2.4-GHz Bluetooth Version 1.2 standard. The new ICs include the BlueCore3-Multimedia chip and the BlueCore3-ROM chip. The former includes user-programmable digital-signal-processing (DSP) circuitry while the latter is designed to be a lower-power replacement for the company's second-generation (2G) BlueCore2-ROM chip (using 18 percent less power than its predecessor).

Both Bluetooth radio ICs are designed to provide as much as +6-dBm transmitter power with an on-chip 6-b digital-to-analog converter (DAC) for 30-dB dynamic power control. The on-chip receiver (which operates in a near-zero- IF mode) features integrated channel filters digital demodulator, and digitized received-signal-strength-indication (RSSI) function for real-time control.